Evolution Of Music Is Based On Influence

[Sunny Day Suicide]

For a start, you're relying too much on the premise that "one bad apple spoils the barrel". You can't judge this entire generation of rock music on one band - Greenday.

I wasn't just basing it off of green day. The whole point is that bands who only listen to others like green day will be off on the worse end and another decade will pass and bands will like that band who was inspired by bands like green day and they will be worse then them and double as worse as bands like green day. When I say a bands name I dont just mean solely them. That'd be stupid. That's the reason I included the words like.

Now relate that back to music, everyone has had to have influences somewhere along the way, Hendrix had influences, Led Zeppelin had influences, Black Sabbath had influences. Those people/bands are pretty much some of the biggest and most influential names in rock and roll,

If you read correctly I didn't say they never had influences, I said they had minor influences that doesn't effect the whole band so they were doing their own thing.

jrgen is also correct in saying that bands take on a number of influences in their formative years, and that this has the effect of varying their sound. To use your example of Metallica: just how much do they have in common with Led Zep and Hendrix? You'll pick out a few similarities, yes, but the overall sound is really quite removed, the reason being that every member of the band brings multiple influences to the table. You'll be hard-pressed to find a group of musicians with identical taste, so any band will inevitably end up assimilating the styles of more than one group, as well as adding their own input into the mix.

Although you brought up a good point I never said the whole band liked Led Zep or Hendrix. I said that Kirk Hammet (Guitarist) sited them as his influences as a guitarist. Never the whole band. Who knows, maybe the whole band did like Led Zep but I was reffering to Led Zeppelin.

Besides, it's not as if all the great rock and roll legends weren't imitators themselves. Led Zeppelin owe much to the blues; The Beatles started out playing the sort of simple rock n' roll that had already been popular in America for some time (Elvis, anyone?). Sometimes, because of the legendary status of these artists, it's easy to forget that they were/are music fans themselves, and that they wanted to be like their heroes as much as any band of today wants to be like them.

Rock music started from people like Chuck Berry which evolved from a sort of jazz influence but really no influence at all, playing their own thing. Then comes bands like Beatles, The Who, and Rolling Stones guitarists would be influenced by another guitarist like Chuck Berry or B.B. King but that doesn't influence the whole band so again their on their own thing there. Some of the best music ever with barely any influence.

Barely any influence, not no influence whatsoever.